Message from the President
Dear HKICC Friends,
Did you invest your hard-earned money in the stock market? Or did you buy recently any property? In either case, you are likely to have lost a considerable amount of your savings due to the recent devaluation of your investment.
A few years ago, I 'lost' a lot of money, too. However, I didn't lose it in the stock or property market. I invested in building my coaching and training business and was on the brink of personal bankruptcy around 2 years after starting my company.
How can one still be 'happy' in such a situation? How do you know if keep going is the right thing to do or plain foolishness?
Things didn't exactly turn out as expected: I started my company in December 2002, feeling very optimistic and enthusiastic. I had just completed my professional coach training with Coach U (over 150 hours) and did as much pro-bono coaching as possible to get first-hand coaching practice.
The next thing that happened was SARS in 2003, certainly not conducive to a new start-up.
At the same time, I realised that my past professional experience in marketing and sales was only partly useful in this new business. My past employers were renowned companies in their industry with a certain brand perception. My new business was an absolute nobody with zero brand recognition.
I quickly needed to learn that the key to my new business was to establish credibility.
I learned too that having no network in Hong Kong was a major roadblock to growing my business. I had to build my network from scratch.
Even though I tried to keep expenses low, I had financial commitments which continuously drained my financial resources. After about 2 years, with my business still going slow, I started to borrow money from friends and former colleagues.
Why did I not stop and get back into a properly paid job? I had great professional experience and it would not have been too difficult to find something as the economy improved in 2004.
At that time, I came across a book called "The Alchemist". It's a wonderful story about a shepherd who lost several times everything (including almost losing his life) but never gave up trying to find a treasure he heard about. After going through lots of hardship he finally reached his destination and found the treasure.
This book was the perfect inspiration for me at this dire state and kept me going. I realised that there was no reason why I should not find my treasure, I just hadn't figured out yet how and where. So, I kept going and a couple of months later, I managed to achieve the turnaround.
Also, at that time I learned that most entrepreneurs go through similar phases before they eventually succeed and that it might even be a worthwhile experience because it makes you a more humble and empathetic person. You learn to better relate with people who face hardship and show true empathy. It will always be more difficult for people who never faced any major hardship to truly understand what it means.
The biggest learning experience for me was that happiness is not dependent on financial success. I learned to be happy independent of my financial circumstances. I learned to trust that the right things will happen as long as I believe in them and keep making efforts towards them. They may just not happen with the timing I had in mind.
Times of crisis tend to be good times to learn more about oneself. Use it wisely.
Let's keep progressing!
Charlie Lang, President, HKICC
president@coachinghk.org
Hong Kong International Coaching Community
